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Barcelona Terror attack: Aussies injured

Barcelona Terror attack: Aussies injured

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has confirmed three Australians have been hurt when a van mowed people down in a popular tourist spot, killing more than a dozen people and injuring around one hundred more.

'Establishment phase completed'

While the establishment phase of operation sovereign borders is over the true results won't be seen until March.

In a wide-ranging press conference held on Wednesday with Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell also confirmed reports first published by Fairfax Media that the Australian government had bought lifeboats to help it combat people smugglers.

He would not say how they would be used other than to point out they were for "on water activities".

The number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat is down by 80 per cent since the election, according to the government.

Mr Morrison said that the United Nations refugee agency in Jakarta had also noticed a drop in registrations by 1608 people in September to 296 in December.

"We welcome this trend."

The government has not confirmed reports that about six asylum seeker boats have been turned back to Indonesia in recent weeks.

But on Wednesday, Mr Morrison hinted that ‘‘turn-backs’’ were in play.

"Border protection command is doing things differently to provide active deterrents to those seeking to enter Australia illegally by boat," he said.

Lieutenant General Campbell also suggested that he would be able to provide more detailed information of what the government was doing to combat people smugglers, if Operation

Sovereign Borders was deemed a success.

"Until I can make a more confident judgment on Operation Sovereign Borders' performance, I remain reluctant to release information or further detail on past operational activities, lest it provide people smugglers with trend analysis that might be used against us," he said.

On Wednesday, Lieutenant General Campbell described claims of rough handling as "quite outrageous".

He said the allegations had been investigated internally, but this could not be counted as confirmation turn backs had taken place.

The Immigration Minister said that capacity at Nauru and Manus Island had doubled under the Coalition government, which would in part, cope with the "backlog" of 2000 people on Christmas Island who had arrived since Labor announced its Papua New Guinea resettlement policy in July 2013.

Following on from his announcement on Tuesday that the government would close four mainland detention centres, saving $88.8 million a year, Mr Morrison said that he would announce "further rationalisations" of onshore detention facilities later this year.